The Worth of Her Sacrifice
by Certainly-Not-A-Writer
Summary: My return to writing, and it's about Political Shows, existentialist headaches, sandwiches, Singing in the Rain, and Dostoevskian dialogue. Simply put, why did Madoka sacrifice herself anyway? Two Parts, featuring a nauseatic Sayaka M. and a chain-smoking Homura A. in a post-Rebellion timeline. TL;DR warning. Rated M for language, violent thoughts and Author's Notes. It's serious.
1. First Part

_**Author's notes: **__Well, shit. This is the first story I've published in since my Clannad stint almost… two, three years ago I think? Why did I start writing again, you ask? Long story short, I watched a few animes, read a few books, took up some classes and ended up growing a boner for wordsmithing again. Nothing substantial, just something to let myself publish a few thoughts. A more sophisticated form of masturbation than anything else._

_This story, well I suck when it comes to summarizing things so instead here are some general things to consider before reading it: It features Sayaka, Homura, Kyosuke and other PMMM peeps, it's pretty long—clocking in at 13k words when I last checked—and at most times it sounds like it's been written by a scumbag so there's that. Also, there will be a load of TL;DR and Wall of Text so if you're not so hot with that, then avoid this fic. It just so happened that I was drunk reading The Brothers Karamazov when I wrote the other things here hence why they're like that. Don't worry though, they're all in the second part of this fic so you shouldn't worry about it (for now, at least...)._

_One final thing, when I checked how many stories are in this fandom I think I shat myself when I saw 1.6k coming out of the story count next to name on search. I wonder how many days it would take before this one gets piled over with all the other stuff after this gets put into the site. Oh well, whatever. _

_Still here? Fuck. Okay, just one little wish (if I'm even in the position to make that sort of thing), please drop comments once you've actually finished the story so I'll be able to use them in improvements of my writing style and other things. Fanfiction's the only place I can get useful criticism these days, so I'll really thank those who would leave their thoughts in the review corner. In fact, here's a thanks in advance for reading this far. Oh, and here's a gold star too. _

_Jesus, I should get off the Waffle Tacos before someone sues me..._

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><p><strong>000<strong>

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><p>It was morning in Mitakihara Middle School. The early classes brought in students just coming in, most barely making it across the five-minute late period. It was like a beehive, buzzing with activity as they went around looking for their classes, or jabbering in the halls about this or that topic. The sky was clear and dust shone in the sunlight that reflected through the glass walls. The perpetual din of people talking floated in the air, the usual morning scene.<p>

Sayaka Miki closed her eyes, taking in the sounds in her ears. They always calmed her, anchoring her axis to the earth, putting her feet onto stable ground. A good way to get a grip on things. She walked idly towards her classroom, arms swaying carefree, thinking about what was to come in today's period. Another brain-melting sesh of the history of the Tokugawa Era, or a lesson on mono-cytosis, or maybe the effects of the half-life of Plutonium on the Earth's atmosphere. They might as well teach the language they use in Mars, for all she cared. School was school, mornings were mornings, and Sayaka's quality quiet time was the only time she wanted for that day.

She had no choice not to.

Suddenly some gravitational anomaly latched itself on her shoulder, almost making throwing Sayaka off-axis. Before she had time to react, a boy with green hair was holding her shoulder. "Well you seem kind of spaced-out today, Sayaka," he said.

Kyosuke's hand was light, but it might as well be three units of heavy antimatter. But why was Sayaka thinking of science anyway? In expectation of class? Probably. "Not really," she told him. "Just tuning myself in, I guess."

His eyes went up towards the ceiling, and he swayed the violin case in his other hand. "Tuning yourself in like that might get you a bump in the head. What are you doing anyway?"

She smiled. "Walking, considering the possibilities of skipping class, thinking of antimatter. You know, the usual."

He stared at her for a few seconds before cracking his own smile and letting go of Sayaka's shoulder. "You're being weird again," Kyosuke offered. "As the usual."

She looked at him. "Really? I don't recall being like this." And that was the truth.

"What do you mean you're not like that? You always space out when its' just you." He brought up the violin case, pointing the long end towards her. "Sooner or later you'll bump into a post or something, you know that?"

When Sayaka woke up that morning, everything felt unreal. Like she was at the bottom of the sea, exploring its murky depths without a scuba mask or diving gear, watching a living, breathing painting that had its own life in a dimension twice-removed from her own. To put it in context with her axis-anchoring, she was the Captain of a Space Battleship, cruising the seas of Pluto when unknowingly she had entered a rift in time-space, seeing all of the periods of time in one place but never becoming involved. Only an observer on an elevated platform surrounded by safety rails and wired fences for your own protection. She felt like this all morning, being twice, thrice-removed, not all really there. Like she wasn't even supposed to exist.

But why? She forgot. Maybe there wasn't any reason at all. Sayaka spent a few moments of thinking, but thinking wasn't exactly her strong point.

So she gave up."Yeah. When you think of it, looping out randomly is kind of dangerous, huh?"

"Yup, really dangerous."

Sayaka put up a finger. "Two votes dangerous."

Kyosuke let go of her shoulder and pretended to knock a mallet. "Motion passed. To be submitted to the Prime Minister's committee for review."

"The crowd goes wild, cheers, exclamation, Antarctic ice caps restored, world peace, Hokkaido becomes independent, mankind reaches the stars…" She snatched the violin case from his hands. "Bach becomes the catalyst for world revolution!"

"He-hey!" Kyosuke tried to grab it back with both hands, but Sayaka was too fast and he almost tumbled over. "Careful with that, it's a copy of the Stradivarius."

She held the long end with both hands like a bat. "I wonder…"

"You'll mess up the strings, Sayaka. It's a real pain to tune that thing, you know?"

"Tune it, then. You're a master violinist, right?"

"I would if the strings didn't snap half of the time," he said, almost groaning the words with his eyes closed.

Sayaka dramatically put her palm up to her forehead, as if swooning. "Ah, the suffering of a violinist extraordinaire."

Kyosuke chuckled. "The hell? The suffering of a violinist extraordinaire? Where do you get all these lines?"

Where _did _she get all of these lines? If only Sayaka could answer him. "Nah, I'm just being weird again, is all. My head's still way up there. I think I'll still need some time to re-align myself to reality." Maybe all day, if that was what it would come to.

"Well, take all the time you need. Besides, you're sounding like your old self again anyway. A little drunk, maybe. But it's you we're talking about here, so I guess it's acceptable."

"Ouch."

He sniggered. "I'm kidding."

They continued walking, letting their conversation drift into comfortable silence. Sayaka always felt at ease with Kyosuke around like this. He acted as her anchor to the world of reality, giving her a safe port of call in stormy weather. How many times had Sayaka depended on him like this? She forgot. As much as everything else, really. Vague feelings remained, almost physical but invisible to the naked eye. But never the full, concrete images. More like subjective imprints than real memories. Was that a bad thing?

In front of them, two girls came up from the right corner. They turned to walk in the same direction Sayaka and Kyosuke took, and talked in comfortable but hushed tones. The one on the right had short, pink hair tied in two ponytails like an elementary school student, the other one on the left a long mane of straight black hair that went down to her waist. Sayaka immediately recognized them. Kyosuke too. Their names needn't any introduction.

"Oh, it's those two again," he went on first.

Sayaka squinted her eyes for a few moments, before nodding lightly. "Yep, it's them alright."

"Wonder what they're up to this fine morning."

"Well, you see that they're walking, of course."

"And talking, don't forget that."

"Hmmm, yes, I did not note that. Fine work, my good man."

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

Sayaka turned her head. "And since when did you become Sherlock?"

Kyosuke smiled. "Duly appointed by Scotland Yard, of course."

She stared at him for a full ten seconds before turning her attention again to the duo in front of them. "You're half a nutcase yourself, you know that?"

Her friend sniggered at the comment but offered nothing more. The mysterious girl duo before them had become a conversation topic between Sayaka and Kyosuke for the last few days, a funny little caricature in the myriad of characters in their school. Always together, always inseparable, always caught up in Sayaka and Kyosuke's sights. An anomaly that popped out of nowhere in particular, started by the entrance of pink-haired girl's entrance into Mitakihara via sudden transfer from the US a few weeks ago, the only remarkable thing Sayaka could ever recall about her. It wasn't really strange to see girls to always be together in pairs. Heck, she and Kyosuke were in a pair, provided that you considered him a girl. These two in front of them though, they looked strange. Strangeness practically screamed like a phantom in their shadows wherever they went, thus they became a usual staple of Sayaka and Kyosuke's conversations, like rice in meals.

A few moments of silence ensued before Sayaka asked something. "What are their names again?"

It was Kyosuke's turn to stare at her. "Are you serious? They're in your class and you don't know?"

For some inexplicable reason, even these two were just vague imprints in Sayaka's mind too. Implications with no physical form, just a feeling that they were supposed to be in her brain without any label for naming or other. "Apparently I'm too high up there that I've forgotten them."

"Wouldn't want to be you when I have to memorize something," he replied. "Well, the girl to the right over there's named Kaname, I think. The one on the left is named named…" Kyosuke crossed his arms and thought for a while. "Murakami something? I dunno."

"Akemi," Sayaka corrected.

"See, you _do_ remember."

"Yeah, I think so. It's like when you hear the tone of a song and you remember the lyrics afterwards. Unfortunately I don't have first names on them. Got any idea?"

"Why so interested?"

Yeah, why so interested? Sayaka wondered what would be the reason, grasped at it, but never got it completely in her hands. "I dunno. I think it's because I feel that my spacing-out's connected to them somehow." She didn't know exactly how but whenever Sayaka saw the pair, she always felt that there was some intangible, invisible connection between them. In spite of the fact that they've never fully met before, or even talked before.

"Connected how?" Kyosuke asked. "Because they're like us?"

She immediately got what he meant by that. "What, a comedy duo?"

"A regular _boke _and _tsukkomi _routine, performers blessed with the gift of gab. They might prove to be worthy opponents once we come onstage with them."

"What are you talking about? We can't be a comedy duo. They'd boo us off the stage and make us pay everybody for moral damages."

Kyosuke looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah, makes you think it'd be useful if everybody had 'bad comedian' insurance."

"Good grief, we were talking about how I think they're causing me to space out and now we're proposing insurance for bad comedy." Sayaka facepalmed. "What kind of nonsense is this…?"

"It makes as much sense as you saying that they're connected to making you groggy like that." In truth, Kyosuke was definitely worried. Sayaka knew that, and he probably wanted answers. "What gives?"

"I can't explain it much but, it's like there's a string attached between me and them. A three-way connection that may only exist because I think it does. They're tugging it, and it pulls a trapdoor under my feet, making me fall out of reality." She paused to think of more words to describe it, but eventually shook her head as if remembering a bad memory. "I dunno, that's as best as I can put it." And it definitely was. Pushing herself to make a much clearer explanation would only end up making things more complicated for Sayaka. She'd never get herself out of this rut like that.

"Hmmm, the red string of fate, perhaps?" Kyosuke offered.

Sayaka looked at him and cracked a smile. "Come on, it's not like that."

She held his chin and her eyes gleamed with interest as she looked at them. "Well it's definitely like that for those two, if you know what I mean."

"You think so too?"

"A hundred and fifty percent. I know forbidden love when I see it. Like rain is wet, the sun is hot, grass is green..."

"Two votes for a hundred and fifty percent forbidden love. That, and you're a pervert."

"Motion denied," he said abruptly.

Sayaka snapped her head towards him, eyes wide in alarm. "Why? Did the Opposition block our vote again?"

"I'm afraid so. They were able to buy off three of our representatives," Kyosuke explained, in a seriously dramatic tone, pushing the bridge of an invisible pair of glasses up his nose. "We'll need at least six more votes and two abstentions before we can apply for an appeal."

Sayaka turned away and rubbed the back of her head with her hand. "Seriously, we need to lay off all those political dramas we watch at your house…"

"Which reminds me—" Kyosuke turned his head. "Are you coming over today?"

"Afraid not. Apparently, we have this thing. It's called a project, and it so happens that you, Hitomi and I are partners and we're supposed to actually _do_ something and not laze around at your house."

Kyosuke clapped a palm to his forehead. "Oh, right…"

Sayaka folded both her arms. "You forgot, didn't you?"

He gave her an apologetic look. "I have violin lessons all the time, Sayaka. Cut me some slack."

"You suck."

"At least I'm good at playing the violin," he said, exhuming confidence.

"Good at having a big head, if you ask me…"

"Being really confident is a marketable skill too, you know."He paused for a few moments, letting the conversation's silence segway him into another segment. "Anyway, just forget about that trouble in that head of yours. Red string or not, there's really no reason for you to let yourself fall into some sort of funk just because of some random thought."

"It's just that..." Before she could say it, the words terminated, pulling a grenade and detonating themselves rat than to be captured, eliciting a deep sigh from Sayaka. "Whatever. It's hard. Everything's out of place, artificial. It's like I'm watching a TV show and I've already read the script and met the cast, but I didn't. The willing suspension of disbelief's already been cast off; out of the airlock and into the atmosphere. Only the fakeness remains. Tell me, am I even making sense?"

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're in your period."

If she didn't know any better, Sayaka would have already punched him in the face. But she only sighed again. "You're a dolt."

"No, I'm serious." And he was. Kyosuke stared at her with a straight face. "Get it out of your head already. You're just imagining things. You don't have to gripe over it. I mean come on; you don't even know those two. Get a grip. Whenever you see Hitomi and I together, does it disturb you?"

Sayaka had some answers to that, but she chose to keep them to herself. "Not really, no. Besides, you two are different."

He raised a brow. "Different? How?"

She gripped the violin case a little tighter than she would have liked to. "They're just friends. You're a couple."

When it came out of Sayaka's mouth, the word _'They're'_ sounded like _'We're'. _For some reason, she meant it to be that way.

"I don't see the difference," he told her. "Besides, you shouldn't think about things like this in the first place. Stop thinking too much and just enjoy yourself. That funk you're in right now is doing nothing but getting in the way of your happiness."

_Getting in the way of your happiness._ She wondered what the cause of that was. Ahead the pair in front of them split to let someone else come between them. Hitomi politely excused herself and greeted both Sayaka and Kyosuke with her usual refined tastes.

For a moment though, Sayaka thought that she had caught Akemi's eyes. They were blue and shined as if they were observing some grand secret. Before the thought could fully consummate itself however, she had already averted her gaze and walked away with her companion, Kaname.

"Good morning, sweetie!" Hitomi beamed at both of them, but most especially at Kyosuke. She even brought up a lunch box for him. "How are you today, Kyosuke?"

"He was hitting on girls at the street," Sayaka said nonchalantly. "Wowing them with his violin skills and promising them dates left and right."

Before the thoughts could even register in his head, Kyosuke turned to look at her. "Wait, what…"

Hearing this, Hitomi's face shifted, sagging from her bright and colorful expression to a near-deathly look of sobriety, her eyes grey and dull. "…is that true, Kyosuke?"

"It was crazy, I tell you," Sayaka continued. "He just kept wagging his violin and they all just went up to him. Most of them even offered to pay for the date themselves and they gave him scented pant…" Sayaka paused. She wouldn't make the joke too extreme, of course. "Letters."

"Wait, what the hell?!" He sputtered, "S-Sayaka! Nothing like that happened!"

"He even tried to win me over and I can say Hitomi—this boyfriend of yours, you should probably put him on a leash." She put the back of her hand against her forehead again, as if swooning. "Even if you're my friend, I can only hold out against him for so long…"

"Yes Sayaka, I was thinking of whether or not I should buy my puppy a steel chain for a leash." Hitomi put a hand to her chin and looked at her boyfriend menacingly. "Maybe I should order extra..."

"A _leash_? Hitomi, she's lying!" Kyosuke begged and begged, but Hitomi was simply not listening as she took him by the ears. "Ow! Hitomi, not there!"

"Should I smash this Stradivarius now?" Sayaka offered to Hitomi, holding the case like a hammer.

"No, its fine Sayaka." She put out a hand. "Give it here. I'll dispose of it later myself."

As Sayaka handed the violin to her friend, Kyosuke gaped in horror as he heard the orders for its destruction. "No, don't destroy it! It costs more than a year's tuition!"

"Then I think selling it off online would be better," Sayaka suggested.

"Yes, and I can use the money earned for our dates," Hitomi chorused.

"Both of you are insane!" Kyosuke would have shouted more, but Hitomi tugging on his ears cut them short, replacing them with a shrill kind of screaming.

"Well Sayaka, it's been good seeing you this morning. Let's talk more at class, okay?" Hitomi was about to turn to her boyfriend when she paused, as if forgetting something. "Oh yes, let's talk later about the project as well too. Farewell!"

And Hitomi waved happily at Sayaka as she pulled Kyosuke by his left ear, who was screaming.

"SAYAKA-!" he cried, his voice echoing into the halls depths.

Like that, Sayaka was all alone again. But nothing took away the feeling of fakeness that had taken hold of that morning. It was a pure white cloth, stained by the hard brown mess of realization, never to come off.

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><p>It became worse at midday. The fakeness had turned to nausea, making Sayaka ask the teacher if she could go to the nurse's office.<p>

"Miss Akemi, please bring Miss Miki to the nurse's office," he ordered, barely looking at them from the blackboard he filled with arcane, algebraic symbols.

Before Sayaka could even reject the offer, Akemi had already made it to her desk. She loomed over Sayaka, her tired blue eyes gazing upon her with a sober, nonchalant stare. Sayaka felt chills seeing them, and she shook her head. But her body did otherwise; it followed Akemi out of the classroom.

Weaving through the halls and the glass corridors, they barely opened their mouths save for pithy, one-word directions. More like orders than anything else. Sayaka kept a few meters distance from Akemi, and it was certain that latter wouldn't make any effort on her part to bridge the gap either. Being with her was like being in a gravity well, Akemi being an extreme antimatter core that seemed to suck the life out of everything she went near or touched. Everything died in her wake, or if it survived it wouldn't be the same again. She was a very charming person to be with.

When they came up to the nursing office, Akemi merely waved her hand towards the door and turned away without another word. She had very good manners too.

Somewhere down the end of the hall stood Kaname, looking over the corner with her eyes locked on Akemi until she came near. Kaname smiled as she came near and Akemi slung her arm around her shoulder as they disappeared to the left. When Sayaka saw that, she didn't know what to think, and merely scratched the back of her head.

The Nurse gave her an aspirin and asked if she was in her period, among other things. Sayaka couldn't explain that there was this nagging joke in the back of her head that pulled a plug and caused her brain to go woozy.

While the nurse spoke about eating the right food and getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep, everything started to break down in Sayaka's perception, becoming only their component parts. The nurse's office was turning into a room with four walls and a few pieces of furniture. The medicine cabinet turned into a closet full of bitter things. The bed turned into a clump of foam covered in cloth on a metal frame, the nurse a bag of flesh and organs that was worried about loans, tax exemptions, overtime pay. The transformations around Sayaka scared her half to death, but even her feelings turned into just electric impulses triggered by hormonal secretions by some gland or other in her brain. In order to stop fearing something, one must understand it first. But Sayaka had the misfortune of understanding what her fear is, making her fear the fact that she understood it in its entirety.

_Does that even make any sense? _She asked herself as she laid down on that piece of foam on the metal frame, staring at the blocks of plywood painted over with white that used to be a ceiling. She managed to fake her sickness to let her have 3 hours, 180 minutes, 10800 seconds of rest. Or to put it in other terms, a period where you lie still and keep your eyes open, hoping you don't vomit.

The bad thing about getting rest is that everything after it is so much worse. She came out feeling crappier than she did coming in. She could barely keep her head together during Science class, and heaven forbid she focus in Algebra. When English rolled along, Hitomi came with her khaki-green waves of hair and glowing green eyes, looking as if she was really concerned for her project partner. "Sayaka, are you okay?" She cocked her head to the side as if observing a cute puppy. A sick, nauseated, to-the-point-of-blowing-chunks sort of cute puppy. "Are you feeling ill?"

Sayaka would have loved to look at her with her head tilted slightly to the back while smiling and say, _"Nooo, I'm not feeling ill. I'm not feeling ill at all. I'm just training for an Academy Award for Nauseatic Acting." _But she decided not to. It wasn't worth the trouble. Especially since it's just Hitomi. She didn't deserve to have Sayaka dump all of this on her. "I'm just a little under the weather, but I'm fine, yeah." A little acting goes a long way. "What seems to be the trouble?"

Hitomi stared at her for a few more moments, thinking of whether she should take that load of bull or not. She closed her eyes and decided that it would be better if she just took her friend's word for it. It was not a can of worms she wanted to open, unlike everything else in her life as much as Sayaka was concerned. "Well Sayaka, Kyosuke and… well, mostly I actually, were thinking if we should start discussing what we're going to do for the project later after school…" They were going to eat out at Mitakihara mall and Hitomi was wondering if Sayaka didn't mind to join them on their little date. She didn't exactly say that, but that was practically what the whole message said. Sayaka would love to join them, and she had a lot of good ideas for the project anyhow so it would really be great if they could talk about it right away. As in the minute the school bell rings they should be out of there immediately. No butts, no waits, no nothing. Just get out of school as quickly as possible.

"Ummm, okay," Hitomi agreed, nodding. "We can do that."

Anything to forget something called nausea. Anything to think that there's something beyond this fakeness. Or at least anything that will hide it long enough for Sayaka to forget that it existed. Would that be possible? Why, of course. As long as you set your mind to it, everything was possible. All you had to do is scrub on the stain hard enough until everything is deleted from your memory.

Everything should be fine.

"Okay then Sayaka, after school it is." And she left, going back towards Kyosuke, who was waiting at her desk with a notebook in his hands. They were already discussing the project. Sayaka was just a fixture, added clout to make it look like there was a choice of free will in the first place. She was aware of that the first thing she got in the middle of their relationship. To Hitomi she was the buoy she could hold onto in case her ship sunk into the sea, to Kyosuke she was the childhood advisor he could depend on for sagely truth. They both wanted to be with each other, but they were both afraid of being alone with each other too, afraid of floating into space just by themselves. So Sayaka was their anchor to Earth. To reality.

But what if Sayaka has lost her own anchor to Earth? What will happen to everybody holding onto her?

What the hell was she even thinking? Wasn't she supposed to have nausea?

Sayaka wanted to bury everything into the ground. She wanted to hit Mitakihara Middle School with the Wave Motion Gun. She wanted to stalk from classroom to classroom with a Kalashnikov 7.62 caliber fully automatic assault rifle, dealing hellfire by the drum mag at 3000 rounds per minute. She wanted everything to just disappear.

What was eating her? What the hell could she do to get rid of it?

She looked around the classroom, imagining bodies flailing, glass walls shattering, screams mixing with the clink of falling bullet casings within a fragile crystal palace. In the middle of the chaos someone was standing, reproaching her, saying something. The person's lips didn't move, but they were saying something. Unspoken mental communication, telekinesis, voices in your head. _I'm the one who's doing this to you. I'm the reason why your head hurts so much_, it said. _Hurt me, punish me, whatever you want. Just do something. Anything. Anything at all. _

But Sayaka didn't know who that person is, nor did that person have the courtesy to introduce itself.

She did find herself staring at Homura Akemi though. Talking with Madoka Kaname, as always.

Sayaka put a hand on her forehead, her palm trying its best to become some sort of abnormal brainwave detector. Christ.

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><p>"Well, shall we be off?" Hitomi asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder.<p>

"Hey, not yet," Kyosuke said, eating his hotdog sandwich. "Let me finish this first."

"Well Kyosuke, you always eat so slowly," Sayaka mused, sitting opposite the two lovers on the table. "If you keep being like that, Hitomi will just go up and leave you behind."

"Sayaka, I wouldn't do that to my dear Kyosuke; I'll always wait for him." She smiled sweetly at him, her face glowing. "Right?"

"Well that's what I like about you, I guess," he said, following up with a chuckle.

Hitomi's eyes widened. "I_ guess_?"

He chuckled again, glad to have the payoff from his little joke. "Just kidding; that's what I like about you, a hundred and fifty percent."

_A hundred and fifty percent. _

Upon hearing this, she beamed on him. "You're so sweet, Kyosuke!"

Sayaka watched these two on the sidelines, eating her own sandwich, minding her own business, thinking about school and the math assignment that was to be passed tomorrow. The nausea had lifted. She had to think of a lot of other things lately these days. Who knew middle school would actually be this hard? Spending this afternoon in the café with Hitomi and Kyosuke was the most rest she had had in about 2 days. Other than this project, there was nothing much else to do except schoolwork—work that Sayaka was not too eager at all to carry out.

Then again, schoolwork was better than nausea.

Suddenly she noticed something on Kyosuke's arm, the one holding the hotdog sandwich to his mouth. Something was wrong with it, out of place even. She had to know why it was so. "Hey Kyosuke, when did your arm get better?"

He takes a bite out of his food and looks at Sayaka. "What?"

"Your arm," she said, pointing hesitatingly with her finger, "When did that get better? Didn't you get into an accident?"

Kyosuke raised a brow dubiously. "What are you talking about, Sayaka? I didn't get into an accident."

"Is something of the matter, Sayaka?" Asked Hitomi, who apparently did not get the gist of the strange conversation.

Sayaka paused, and then felt as if something was blocking her head. She held a hand to her forehead with the vague objective of feeling if it was warm. "…why did I say that just now?"

Kyosuke put his head forward, concerned. "Are you okay, Sayaka?"

The block became heavier, and Sayaka shook her head. "No, I… I don't think so." She was getting dizzy, and her stomach felt like churning. She hoped to god that it wasn't because of the sandwich she was eating.

It wasn't.

"Yes Sayaka, you look very pale…" Hitomi stood up and motioned to feel if her friend had a fever, but Sayaka declined her hand. She felt like the ground was a very thin layer of existence that would crumble and collapse, letting her fall into some abyss in the darkness. Her body felt loose, as if she was separating from skin to vein to bone, trembling as she did so.

Suddenly, she looked up towards Kyosuke. The way she stared made his spine go cold. A startled, almost perturbed look on her face, her lips barely open and mumbling as if she had found an incantation on Kyosuke's face and committed herself to reading it. The boy was about to say something when Sayaka shuddered and gasped as if just gaining conscience. Her expression changed: it was now of realization mixed with fearfulness as if she had just found a terrible revelation about herself. Her eyes gazed fixedly at his for a few moments, and then slowly turned to Hitomi, and then to the sandwich half in her hand.

She let the sandwich drop to her plate, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato splitting into equal parts, and still remained frozen for a few tense moments. She then broke off eye contact with the air and lifted herself off the table. Kyosuke and Hitomi watched in disbelief as Sayaka walked away, bumping into a man at the café entrance and exiting without so much as a word of apology.

The two remained frozen, and after some time Hitomi glanced at her boyfriend. "What just happened?"

"I…" He stared at the table surface with a blank look before shaking his head. "Honestly, I don't know."

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><p><strong>000<br>**

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><p><strong>Author's notes: <strong>Wondered why this fic's titled '_The Worth of Her Sacrifice'_? It's in the second part of this fic. Also, wondered why there's lines in between the parts in this fic? Apparently 's text editor doesn't like me putting line breaks in-between the story parts. How to remedy this, its either I forgot or I'm just an idiot. Either way, if anybody has any idea how to overcome this properly, any help will be greatly appreciated.


	2. Second Part

Homura Akemi was looking over the Mitakihara River, on the suspension bridge that connected the suburbs to the main city. It ebbed and flowed in an orange, almost vermillion shade that reflected a sinking yellow blob of sun. She closed her eyes, letting its sound sink into her mind. It was still, no flow or recession, just staying in place. Like her, maybe? Staying in place was not too much of a bad idea. Stagnation always cut the costs of having to improve oneself. Why fix something if it wasn't broken, right?

She leaned on the bridge's edge, elbows on the railings. Someone reached her an elegant glass goblet of some purple cocktail, and she took a sip before holding it out to her side and opening her hand. It dropped with an elegant _crack! _ On the ground, and she checked if some of it got on her shoes. She looked to her right and laid her eyes upon one of her wretches, an unsightly white ragdoll made of something awful.

"Clean it up."

The wretch got on its knees, started wiping the ground with a cloth and swept the glass with a small broom. Homura looked upon it with some interest, and suddenly its hair became pink. Some more interest and they got tied into two ponytails in red ribbons. A lot more interest and Homura suddenly had a golf club in her hand.

She studied the figure a little bit more. It was still a ragdoll, but there was something wrong with its face. So she fixed it with the golf club.

_I'm singing in the rain  
><em>_Just singing in the rain  
><em>_What a glorious feeling  
><em>_I'm happy again_

At this time she had already broken around five golf clubs adjusting the wretch's looks.

_I'm laughing at clouds  
><em>_So dark up above  
><em>_The sun's in my heart  
><em>_And I'm ready for love_

In the adjustment, Homura also had the idea of fixing its body, and its arms and its legs, and now they're all repaired: crumbled perfections of form that do not move nor feel.

_Let the stormy clouds chase  
><em>_Everyone from the place  
><em>_On with the rain  
><em>_I've a smile on my face_

Holding the seventh and last club with both hands, she decided that she had had enough and ordered two more wretches to take the adjusted one away.

_I'll walk down the lane  
><em>_With a happy refrain  
><em>_About singing, just singing in the rain..._

She would have finished the whole song had she remembered the lyrics well. She had to improvise by humming the tune instead, and it worked either way. The golf club, she chucked into the river, and she closed her eyes in anticipation of the _ploop _it would make.

She opened her eyes and saw Sayaka Miki throw a fist into her face.

When she opened her eyes again, a few cars were climbing up—or rather, _across_ the bridge. A slow trail of some thick liquid flowed out towards those cars, and when Homura touched her nose it came back warm and crimson. A cloth appeared in her hand and she wiped her face before fully sitting up to face her assailant.

Sayaka's eyes screamed bloody murder. "I remember everything, _bitch_."

Homura looked at her with a sober, almost tired expression. "How…?" she asked, her voice muffled. Holding that cloth in front of her face as it slowly turned pink made her look like she was suffering from a cold.

"It doesn't matter how," she replied, clenching her fists. "Free Madoka or else."

Homura threw her rag away, revealing a mocking sneer. "Or else what?"

"Or else…" Sayaka ambled as if to make another punch. But she paused, staring at Homura in realization. She had none of her powers as a magical girl or as a witch, and the person before her was a demon that could erase her out of existence with a flick of the wrist.

_Shit._

Seeing the consternation on her face, Homura's sneer twisted into mirth, and her chuckle slowly became a loud, boisterous laugh that pierced Sayaka's insides. She managed to stand up, and despite herself she continued laughing until Sayaka gritted her teeth in rage. The Demoness' laugh soon slowed into a snigger, until a remnant of a bright smile remained on her face. "How stupid can you get?" she asked, her question laced with humor and contempt. "You come charging towards me without any sort of power and you realized it just now? Sayaka Miki, you must be the most ignorant person I've ever met. Unbelievable, just unbelievable…"

Sayaka threw another punch towards her, but having lost the element of surprise she had on her first strike, Homura easily dodged her attempt by taking one step to the side. Without doing anything else, she let Sayaka lose her balance and fall face first into the ground. She merely watched her assailant as she rose up again and tried another attack with her fists, but Homura merely stepped back again, this time making her knuckles contact the steel railing with a metallic thud. Instantly Sayaka opened her mouth in pain as her right hand trembled from the impact. But she still did not give up—she tried to kick Homura, but it was a wild, undisciplined strike that the latter easily caught and used to throw her back into the ground.

The fighting, if it could be called that, continued until Sayaka's lungs crushed themselves for air and wheezed, beads of moisture dropping down from her chin. Homura watched her with apathy, having barely broken a sweat.

"It's useless to fight with me like this," she taunted, smiling. "How about I just erase your memories again so you can go back to your normal life and forget that this all happened?"

Still wheezing, Sayaka pushed herself from the ground with both hands and managed to get herself on her knees, shaking her head slowly in reply. "Screw you…"

Homura grimaced, not liking that particular phrase. So she gave Sayaka the gift of a kick to the gut, rolling her over on the ground. She walked over to her and watched as she cringed and folded like a pocketknife, both arms wrapped over her stomach. Homura smiled and she stared for a few more moments before deciding that enough was enough. The world was going to go back as it was for Sayaka Miki. She would just heal her wounds later—

A hand held onto her ankle. Homura looked down and saw Sayaka stare at her. Sober, dead eyes that had long given up on hope and only remain to enrage the living. She did not speak and Homura tried to shake her hand off, but it would not budge. She tried to pull harder but Sayaka refused to let go. Frustrated, Homura kicked her in the face until it was nothing but a mess of dirt and blood, but the force around her ankle was a vicegrip that would only go if its perpetrator lost her life first.

Sayaka looked at her strangely with her blue eyes, an empty but fixated stare that subtly bordered on psychosis. A smile awkwardly, creepily curled forth between her lips. "…You're sick of it, aren't you?"

Homura was on the verge of delivering another kick to convince her to let go, but what was said caught her off guard. "What?"

"You're sick of your life," Sayaka continued. "You're sick of living as you are now. You hate yourself and you are tired of what you're doing. So to relieve your hate, you unloaded yourself on me. You pretended I was you, and you were somebody who hated everything about Homura Akemi, crazed by the opportunity to beat her and make her suffer."

Homura's eyes widened in surprise, but she did not betray what they signified. "And how did you know that?" she asked, a more of an honest question than anything else.

"The whole reason why you beat me up. If you really wanted to get rid of me, you would have just erased me whenever you wanted. Instead you chose to make me suffer like this, and then mock me for how stupid I was. If you really didn't hurt inside, you would have considered me as trash and dealt with me appropriately."

"I already am dealing with you appropriately. Starting with how I'll erase your memories so completely that you'll need some time before remembering your own name."

"And are you sure that memory wipe will be the final one? Remember, it's been twenty-six times already. Your mind-wiping skills are not as good as you would like to think."

"Still, it'd be best if I kept you alive."

"And why is that? Because Madoka might get worried about me? Because she'll notice that Sayaka's gone and think that she should go look for her? What are you talking about? She doesn't even know me anymore! You've written everything in such a way that none of us know Madoka anymore, and you're the only one who will be left to be with her. You're selfish. You want to keep Madoka here for yourself."

"And so what if I am selfish? What if I am keeping Madoka here for myself? It's because I'm protecting her. I don't want her to get hurt anymore."

Sayaka's face took on a shade of lament, almost of humored, mocking hate towards the one who defeated her, letting her smile curl into a spiteful form. "Heh, right. That's always your excuse. Protect Madoka. Always protect Madoka, nobody else but Madoka. Madoka, Madoka, Madoka, she's all you've ever cared about. Then what's this, huh? What's this absurd world you made for her? You told me back then that you did not give a damn about others as long as Madoka's okay, but you don't even give a damn about Madoka yourself. You don't give a damn about what she feels. You never respected her sacrifice. You never respected her at all. You just jumped around timeline to timeline forcing yourself on her. Yeah, I saw what you did. The Law of the Cycles let me see everything you've done, in all timelines. And let me say Homura Akemi, I'm not impressed." She shook her head. "I'm not impressed at all."

Homura clenched a fist, staring into Sayaka's eyes with a dead contempt that is merely waiting for the right time to strike. She took this as a confirmation that the demon would not stand her words, and she was bound to destroy her one way or another, any minute now. But the blow she expected never came. Instead, Homura walked to the railing, sat on the ground and leaned on it, both legs laid flat. She produced a cigarette from her sleeve, and a lighter from another, and used both pieces to light and let her blow gray smoke out of her moist red lips. Sayaka looked at her cautiously as the afternoon sun painted her neutral, longsuffering features in a vermillion glow. She remained silent as she left puff after puff come out, as if each contained a tiny percent of her evil in a bid to purify oneself. Thinking that the situation might allow her to do so, Sayaka crawled up to the rail and leaned on it as well, watching the cars sail past them on the road. She cleaned herself up with a handkerchief, the once-white fabric rendered into a rosy-brown rag after a few wipes.

A few minutes past without any words between them, but in both of them still hung a vague sense that they should interact with one another, either by violence or destruction. Yet both of them were tired of it, tired of the same sequence of events, the same acts of a stale old play. None of them wanted to hurt anybody. The only thing they wished for was for one of them to lift the silence, but neither girl wanted to take responsibility for such a task, trying to subsist on basic pleasantries like Homura offering a cigarette and Sayaka respectfully declining.

"Free Madoka," she said after doing so, staring mindlessly into the clouds.

"Never," came the cold reply. "Convince me."

"Why?"

Homura had an answer to it, but thought it better to reserve her words in silence.

Sayaka disregarded her lack of words and shrugged off the earlier challenge. "Why did you do it?" she asked, resolute.

"I wanted to protect Madoka," she said. "I will not say anything else."

"You betrayed her. After she went all that way into your grief seed to save you, you went and betrayed her, dragging her down to the ground and chaining her, keeping her as far away from her old life as possible. You made this wonderful gilded birdcage to watch her over and over again for your own amusement. Once she awakens, she'll never forgive you. Never."

"I will not ask anybody for forgiveness for what I've done. Especially from her," Homura said. "I have already provided everything she will need, and all of what you will need as well. I have already made sure that your lives will forever be peaceful. I have already made sure that nobody will hurt her or you ever again. This should be enough."

"You gave her a good life, sure. You let everybody live again, okay. You took away the witches, the soul gems, the incubators and you threw them somewhere nobody will ever be able to see them for all eternity, I'll give you that. Okay, all of your intentions are noble. But what about her old wish? Her sacrifice? She only wanted to stop the suffering of magical girls from all eternity. That's why she sacrificed her human form and made herself omnipresent in the past, the present and the future, letting them die and respecting their wishes, but giving them rest and have everlasting peace. She loved all magical girls, and she found that they were worthy of her sacrifice because of this. She merely loved them, but what did you do? You desecrated her wish and dragged her down here to be with you."

She shook her head and looked at Sayaka with severity. "Do you think that she really loved those magical girls? You just told me that she sacrificed her physical form and existed in all the times, past, present and future out of her love for them. Such a feat needs intense love. A love that does not ask and does not receive but gives and keeps giving. Do you really think there is that kind of love in the world?"

"Yes!" Sayaka exclaimed, turning her head towards her. "There is that kind of love!"

"Where? Do you see it right now? In the fourteen years you have lived a physical life and the eternity you have been in the Law of the Cycles, tell me in all honesty if you have seen that kind of love in life. Now, tell me and make sure that it really is an example. See? You don't answer. That is because that kind of love does not exist at all. It never has. It never will, for so long one knows the difference between good and evil then exhibiting that kind of love will be close to impossible."

"But Madoka was able to do it," defended Sayaka. "She was able to give that kind of love to the world and she used it to create her sacrifice. She's never thought of anything else but making other people happy. You've seen it yourself. You were there when she made that wish, so what right do you have to say that that kind of love does not exist in the world?"

"If that is the case, Madoka is a rare breed of person. A special person, never to occur in a multitude of lifetimes, the reason why I did this in the first place. If she was able to exhibit that kind of love for the world, then it is the rarest kind of love that can ever exist. But she is still a person. Let me ask you something: Do you think that the magical girls she had sacrificed her life for were worthy of that love?"

"Yes!" Sayaka cried.

"Why do you think so?"

"Because they suffered so much after making their wishes and Madoka thought that they deserved to be happy."

"If their suffering was too great that they needed Madoka to stop it, they shouldn't have just made their wishes," Homura muttered loathingly.

Sayaka's eyes gleamed. "What are you talking about? You know why we made those wishes! Kyubey tricked us."

"If you would look at it in retrospect, we were being offered wishes by an unknown entity and we didn't even question why. If we had more sense, we would have doubted It first and asked what the cost of these wishes. Did we do that? No, we did not. We immediately gave It our trust without any question, without thinking that anything as good as that would, no—_should _come at a price. Wishes are beyond logic and reason, therefore it would only make sense if they would backfire or cost too much. There is none to blame but us. Us and us only. What right did we have to force our stupidity upon Madoka?"

"But those wishes… They had all of our thoughts and dreams. I made mine to help Kyosuke. You made yours to save Madoka. Thousands of other magical girls made wishes that were important to them. She thought that all of those wishes were worth saving because they were granted by the Incubators in bad faith, because all of those girls trusted them. Some of their wishes advanced humanity to what it is now, so Madoka thought that they deserved merit for their sacrifice."

Hearing her words, Homura chuckled, and then grinned cynically towards the sky. "Alright, fine. Let us say that there are wishes that are worthy of being saved. Let us say that there are magical girls who are worthy of Madoka's love. But what about the others? The weak? The timid? The selfish? The others who have made their wishes for all sorts of useless, stupid reasons. How large is the world? Six-point-seven billion people. That is how much people are on this world as of this moment. Can you even comprehend how many girls are in that population? And can you even imagine how many of them had made contracts with the Incubators? How many contracts can you say have been made with the best intentions for wishes? If their wishes were the kind of wishes you say were worth saving, don't you think the world had already become a better place by then? If you believe that every wish made by every girl with an Incubator is such, then you overestimated them. Madoka as well."

"Overestimate _how_? And what right did you have to say that their wishes were useless and stupid? They made those wishes with their feelings, and something in their situations must have forced them to make those wishes. They only wanted to—"

"Only wanted to what, Sayaka Miki? Don't tell me that you're going to pretend that you know what they were feeling when they made their wishes and their contracts with the Incubators. Can anyone really understand how another feels? Can you understand what another girl feels and wants? No, you can't. Because you are not them. They will not understand you too because they are not you. And the Incubators understood neither of you. To them, a wish is a wish. To you they must be important, to me they might be too. But reality thinks otherwise. To reality most wishes made are stupid, and it shows every time a magical girl turns into a grief seed because their wishes turned for the worst. Have you ever noticed why in movies where the hero is given three wishes, most of the time her first wish is really stupid? For us, we only get one wish, and it's really easy to just wish it and go. There are definitely girls who have wished for boyfriends. There are also girls who have wished for money. And it's impossible not to have girls who wished to become beautiful and popular and smart and glamorous. All of their wishes would go down in despair someday, because a relationship can only be good as long as you do not fight, money can only make one happy as long as it is still there, and popularity can be good for so much until one gets tired of it. And I have not even covered the incredibly stupid wishes. It is not impossible, you know? With so many girls in the world, there might have been millions who have wished to have a car, or a huge cake, or maybe even a small slice of cake. They were things they could simply achieve by themselves, but were too inept and weak to do so and ended up trading their souls. And you can't say that I'm wrong, because the nature of the world itself makes sure that at least nine out of ten things would always be stupid. Even the nature of wishes is skewed, for everything that can go wrong will go wrong, so having stupid wishes that end tragically is unavoidable. And you know who gets to clean this all up? Madoka, precious and innocent Madoka, to whom we have forced our salvation upon. Imagine you are in Her place, and you know that you sacrificed yourself to save every single magical girl in the world. You see the cause of their suffering, and of course there will be thousands of girls who have died because of their noble wishes. But what about the million others, the hundreds of millions who have died for selfish reasons, and those who died for stupid, idiotic, useless reasons? What will you think of them? Will you not despise them? Will you not even for once think, _'Is this worth it?' 'Is this what I gave myself for?'_"

Sayaka shook her head. "No. I will never think of such a thing," she said. "Stupid or not, they were still made because of the feelings those girls had when they made them. Feelings of happiness, pain, sorrow, all wishes were made because those girls felt those emotions, and even so they were also made based on what they thought. You can't say that their wishes are stupid because they simply did not have the advantages you had when you made your wish. You can't judge them for what they did because as you said you will never be able to understand what they felt. And even if nine out of ten wishes are stupid, and even if every magical girl should have known what they were getting into, I will never stoop so low and ask myself if this was all worth it. Because it is, as long as I keep saving people, it is. That kind of question will never occur to Madoka."

Homura did not speak, but flicked the cigarette she held delicately in her hand, letting its embers fall into the air and swirl away. She put it again to her lips, and let the smoke blow into a small grey vortex in front of her eyes. She studied this smoke cloud, as if she would somehow divine some interpretation from its arcane patterns, but simply waved it away with her hand. "It would have been acceptable if it was only stupid wishes that filled this earth. The stupidly innocent wishes that are forgivable and worth saving, because those who called for them have not bitten the apple that told them what is good and what is evil. I would have accepted Madoka's sacrifice if it was only that. You are right; knowing her, she wouldn't have asked herself that question either, because the wishes she saved were made with what I assume is good faith. That was what you were getting at, right? That even if these wishes were useless and stupid, they were still made with pure intentions, by pure and honest hearts and are worth salvation because of the innocent tears they had shed. If only the world was filled with those kinds of wishes, but it is not that way. It is not that way at all..."

Sayaka's blue eyes stared at Homura imperceptibly, her pupils moving cautiously to carefully listen to what she had to say.

"Humanity is full of cruelty, of baseness and selfishness," she started. "And there are many who live to be cruel and would do anything to take their sickness to new heights. Girls are not exempt from them. Of course there will be girls who will wish for someone to get hurt, wish for something to get destroyed, or even someone to lose their life. It is not impossible—in fact, it may be a usual occurrence. Some girl wishes for a classmate to get into an accident, another wishes for her ex boyfriend to somehow break his leg, another girl wishes for her parents to die. It would be fine if they were out of feelings of sorrow, or maybe even vengeance because that would only be because the girl's emotions were made by those who wronged her. But what about the other emotions? The baser ones? Anger? Greed? Malice? Jealousy? Hate? Of course there are girls who have made wishes out of those, right? They wished for what naturally came out of their own inclinations, and if we're going to base ourselves on what you say of them being worth saving, then tell me on what basis are they worth saving on? What if their wishes were not only stupid but were made out of these emotions, or simple psychotic spite, or simply because the girl had a bad attitude? A girl gets into an argument with her friend and she wishes for her spine to get broken in some freak accident. Another girl gets rejected and she wishes for the boy to get run over by a car. A girl's father did not give her that new pair of shoes she's pestered him for almost a week, and she wishes for daddy's flight to blow up and boil his insides in fire. What's great about humanity is our pettiness and our ability to dole out cruelty so artistically that if compared to beasts, it would insult the beasts because even they would not be capable of such baseness. And will you still say that they are worth saving? That Madoka is worth sacrificing for their unatoned sins? This is the point of what I am saying: If there are hundreds of thousands of good girls worth sacrificing Madoka for, then what about the hundreds of millions whose base and petty wants and desires have brought unto them despair that they had coming anyway? Sure some of them have not bitten the apple, but to all the others who knew what they were going to suffer for their wishes, or at least had an opportunity to know and had shunned it, Madoka is not worth their sacrifice. She will travel through time and space, killing all of their witches, and though she will save some thousands of noble souls, she will bear witness to the millions, no—_billions_ of mistakes made by baseness and petty desire. She may not criticize them for their lack of virtues, and she might not ask herself if this was worth her life, but she will cry in despair for how ignoble and cruel and evil a girl can be, and she will beat at her own chest crying, _'Why? Why? Why?'_ I do not want that to happen. That is why I keep her here, safe. Without her sacrifice."

Sayaka let each and every word seep into her being, weighing them against her internal principles before in a moment of silence. "But Madoka will not cry," she finally said, her voice shaking as if in a great indignation. "She will not shed tears and she will not beat her chest, because she will be glad that she's saved someone. As long as she gives them cause not to hurt anymore, not to hate anybody anymore, as long as everybody understands why she sacrificed herself to save them, she will never cry. And she will never need a fake world like this to keep safe. All she will need is the happiness of those she had already saved, and all that she wants is for them to acknowledge that. I don't see the point why you did this to her besides your own delusion that somehow Madoka is like you, who can't bear to see how pathetic the world is, who hates it and those who live in its sordidness so you just force your own twisted sense of what is good and evil down its throat. Sure there are girls who are senseless murderers, who are shallow bitches and pathetic excuses for humans, fine. But they are only like that because of what this senseless world had inflicted on them, and if Madoka saved them they could have become better people in peace and happiness—"

Homura suddenly guffawed, and for a few moments the air was filled with nothing but her laughter. Sayaka frowned at the interruption, and set her brows straight while looking at her with a no-nonsense attitude. Homura on the other hand struggled to stop herself, until she had to wipe a single tear off her eye. "Are you serious?" she asked, apparently amused. "Are you seriously telling me that Madoka will still accept them and carry on with her sacrifice? Were you even listening to what you just said? Better people? Them, the _shallow bitches _and _pathetic excuses_ _for humans, _become better people? No, they didn't become better people. The girl still wished for the boy to get hit by a car and caused him to get paralyzed. The other girl still wished for her father to die in a burning jet. What about the boy? What about the father? Don't those girls get to pay for the sins done against them? What, is Madoka a get-out-of-jail free card? That the tears she had already sacrificed leaving everybody close to her were worth saving those wretches? And what will they tell her once she saves them? _'Thank you?'_ That's it? And will they understand her sacrifice so completely? When the world of The Law still existed, nobody even _knew _Madoka, much less _understood_ her sacrifice. They will never understand her sacrifice because she is Madoka and they are other people, who care less about what is outside of them. And what were you talking about pretending Madoka to be like me? I am nothing like Madoka. I am not naïve. I don't have the saving grace of her innocence, and I do not understand her reason to love these wretches who had no right to avail her sacrifice. That world of the Law, where those girls, where _we _made our wishes, we already had the knowledge of good and evil. We had the opportunity to ask what we were going into, and we already knew that it would bring us nothing but despair. Despite that we still made those wishes. And the girl sacrificed her soul to get a boyfriend, another sacrificed her soul to get popular, another traded hers for a single slice of cheesecake, and another one trades for another one's death. And you said that Madoka will not cry? Let me ask you, will _you _not cry after seeing how stupid and base and evil everybody is? I am telling you right now, She _will _cry. And Her tears _will_ be shed forever in light of every single girl she will give an undeserved peace to. If that is the case, if you think such a world is right, and everybody else thinks so, then this world must be insane. Madoka will not be able to go near her family anymore. She will never be able to talk with her friends. She has already lost herself, and she will only be surrounded by souls who have at best a vague sense of gratitude towards her, but that's it. She will never make friends of them, for most of them will be so broken down still that they will just shun her and say, _'Well, you shouldn't have saved us in the first place!' _ Because they do not understand the breadth of her sacrifice and never will understand, they will be ungrateful towards her, and Madoka will be left with nothing but her unatoned, unpaid tears, forced to do an obligation that only makes her shed more for ungrateful souls. She will try in vain to save them all, but she will suffer like this forever, and no one will truly care. Tell me, what do you think will happen once she runs out of tears to shed?"

Sayaka sat up and stared down at Homura, the indignation still glowing in her eyes. "That's horrible of you, Akemi. You think everybody is treacherous, deceitful, pathetic, and you can't make yourself see the kindness in people anymore. How good they can be, how they can be grateful and trusted and wise. I pity you, since you must suffer so much in that heart and head of yours with how you see the world. But now I am going to tell you something. The girls Madoka saves are not as ungrateful and unrepentant as you think they are. Of course there are girls who are like what you've just said, but don't think that they have not repented for their sins. They spent the rest of their existences fighting Wraiths, and lost their lives to protect people in exchange for their wishes. Don't think that they did not pay for their sins, and even if Madoka shed tears for them, don't even think for a second that those tears were not paid for as well. And you talk of her sacrifice as if we had forced it upon her somehow. Don't forget that it was out of the goodness of Madoka's heart that she sacrificed herself. She sacrificed herself out of her own free will, making that wish not just to save herself but everybody too. She wanted to save their souls, and what you did was you destroyed it. I will tell you this again, Homura Akemi: you betrayed her."

Something in what Sayaka said made Homura snap. She threw the cigarette the road, stood up and without a word, she ran her palm across Sayaka's face with a loud _Clap!_ making the girl hold onto the railing with both hands to keep from falling.

"Weren't you listening to I have just said?" Homura cried. "Were you too caught up in your self-righteousness that you've completely lost your common sense, Sayaka Miki? You said that those girls have paid for their sins? That they were worthy of Madoka's sacrifice? _How _are they worthy? Just because they battled Wraiths that they _knew _that would come with the wish? And how long will they fight the Wraiths? A lifetime, you say? Yes, that is just it. _A lifetime_. How much time do you think Madoka will spend killing unborn witches? A hundred lifetimes will never cover how much time she has spent sacrificing herself. I wouldn't have hit you if you stopped there, but the final thing you said, about how Madoka chose this herself. It—it is the same as saying it is all her fault why she is suffering for your sins, a way for you to absolve yourselves from being guilty from all the tears she had shed. I'll never free Madoka, because she does not deserve that kind of punishment. I will never accept a world filled with harmony that finds its foundations on her eternal suffering. Not all the sufferings of the world are worth Madoka beating her chest and crying _why_. I would rather have suffering for the rest of us magical girls, unresolved envy, unresolved anger and feelings of vengeance than to make her suffer. _Even if I am wrong_. Her promise is good, but I reject her salvation. And I will reject it forever, if necessary!"

A few seconds after Homura finished, Sayaka replied with her own hand, leaving a bright red mark on the side of her otherwise clear visage. The two do not speak for a while, with Homura cradling that side of her face and Sayaka staring at her with firmness. "Homura Akemi," she started low-key, "You must hate Madoka so much."

Those words resonated within Homura, and she looked directly at her eyes in response. "What?"

"I have been listening to the way you've been talking about Madoka's sacrifice, how much you want to protect her, and how much you did not want her to suffer in the name of those unworthy of her love. And I can only think that all of this stems from how much you loathe Madoka for making you turn into what you are now. It was as if you were not talking about Madoka at all, but yourself. As I have already said, I watched how you acted to save Madoka in the Law of the Cycles, how you've travelled through each and every timeline and failed to save her because of this and that stupidity, or this and that mistake. You slowly lost yourself, losing track of who you really were until you had nothing left but to save Madoka. It would have been fine if you only wanted that, but wanted something else too. You wanted a reward for saving Madoka. But what reward was going to be worthy of all the sacrifices you made for her? Of course you wanted Madoka. If the world is as base and as selfish as you say it is, then you are no different Akemi, for all those sacrifices you did in Madoka's name were just to actually get your hands on her, make her yours and yours alone. But reality didn't let you do that. At the final timeline where Madoka gets to live, she wishes herself to save all magical girls, depriving you of your precious reward. You told yourself that it was fine; that as long as Madoka was doing fine and saved everybody, then it would be okay with you as well. But as time passed, you knew that you were lying to yourself. After you turned into a witch in your own soul gem, the corruption from all the feelings you had towards Madoka made you realize something. That with all the sacrifices you made for her, she should at least repay you justly. But she didn't even do that. Instead she offers you salvation that you had to share with all of us, plus the fact that she'll never be yours no matter what you do. To her, this is only fair since she sees you as a great friend. To you it's the greatest injustice of all, since you don't see her as a friend. She didn't understand how you felt towards her, and you knew at that point that she will _never_ understand. So you suddenly hated her, hated everything that is to do with Madoka Kaname and her sacrifice. And thus, your betrayal, and your desecration of her wish."

Instead of attacking or erasing her from existence as Sayaka expected, Homura stood there frozen, her gaze staring fixedly at her as if in a short burst of self-awareness, some small, petty secret that had just been unveiled.

Sayaka momentarily relished her expression before continuing. "I know what you wished for. You wanted to be strong enough to protect Madoka, right?"

"And what of it?" She quipped in an air of a cornered animal trying to make a defensive swipe.

"Did you know that most wishes are like coins, with two sides? Your wish is no different. When you said that you wanted to protect Madoka, at the same time you desired to desecrate her. You wanted to have the sole right of having her, for you were responsible for her life. And you wanted her to be with you, and you alone. You are selfish, Homura Akemi. Again, you have no right to take away Madoka's freedom and desecrate her wish, even with all the justifications you had given, all of them based on how cruel and lustful everyone else is. You're no different. I'm no different either. All of us are selfish, base and cruel to some degree, but to Madoka it does not matter. She will still save us either way. Everything you've said up to this point is invalid. She will cry, yes. She will suffer, most definitely. But she chose to bear that cross for everybody else and nobody has the right to stop her. Not us and our sins, and not you and your lust. We may not be valid for Her sacrifice, but you are not valid to own Her either. Everything you've done for her is for your own gain in the end, and every sin we committed was done for our own ends too. But it just so happened that she chose to save us, so you have no right to meddle in what She wants. She wanted to save you too, but you rejected it. Sorry, but it wasn't her fault that her salvation was not what you wanted. You should not blame her for why she didn't see you that way, no matter how many sacrifices you've done for her. _I should know._" Sayaka paused, letting a distant memory peek out of the depths of her mind before continuing. "Akemi, at the start of this conversation you asked me to convince you why you should free Madoka. If that was so, before the discussion began I've already won. You do not have a single reason to keep Madoka here, and you're only killing yourself over frustration with every second you do because you can never make her completely yours. I've seen what you've managed to do to her in this world, and to tell you the truth I would have already killed you if I could."

Homura's eyes widened and she gasped, again caught in another hideous crime. How could Sayaka Miki have found out…?

"You defile my friend on a daily basis, masturbating your own ego with your sick fantasies, trying to take not only her body but her mind and soul. But you can't keep her completely yours. Madoka is a god now, and there is much of that side of her left inside her mind, waiting to be awakened. You struggle to keep it imprisoned, but I know that only slip and your world will go crashing down. You speak of how sin should be paid for, and you yourself are the goddess of sin, so you should know that one day Madoka will come to you personally and repay you for what you've done tenfold. Still, I find it funny, you know? What use will be a hell for you if Madoka's already been desecrated in this birdcage of yours? Sure you will suffer, fine, but for what? The avenging of our moral needs? Serving what is right? Nonsense. If the world really was right, if God existed and is just, then this should have not happened at all. Incubators taking advantage of magical girls, magical girls turning into witches, Madoka going around, suffering to save them, you existing to take her and make her yours. You would think that if this was the just, kind world it is supposed to be, then none of those things should be there at all. I confess: the Law of the Cycles is completely ridiculous. Human emotions turn into wraiths now, Incubators still try to screw us over from time to time, and magical girls still die even we just wanted to make wishes. We fight the wraiths, we run out of magic, and we die and go heaven with Madoka. But what the _fuck_ was the point of making those wishes? Why give girls wishes if in the future they'll never fully enjoy its results? It would have been better if nobody got wishes at all, right? That or unlimited wishes with no price. Such a half-assed system is useless, and it's only there to make girls suffer…"

Suddenly, Sayaka slapped her hand on her forehead, as if realizing something. A mocking, despaired laughter that hearkened closer to one falling into insanity, enough to make Homura get wind caught in her throat out of some vague fear. She looked up to the sky as her laughter intensified, before turning to Homura with a tear falling from the side of her eye. "You know, I've just realized something," she said, almost jovially. "You and me, we're pretty much alike. You're just on top of the ladder while I'm on step one. It sucks to confess it, but it's true. I look for a reward for what I've done, and I'm this close to forcing myself to get it no matter what. But unlike you, I just sat on the sidelines and didn't do anything. I contented myself with standing by his side, watching his performances, just being with him because I knew that a miracle for him to live life like that would need my sacrifice to happen. But until now, I'm still smarting inside. I still love him. It would have been fine if it ended for me after watching him, but unfortunately we don't live in an anime world, and nothing really ends in life until we truly die. But I'm just a fourteen year-old girl. How can I expect myself to accept that?" She looked away from Homura, but kept a finger pointed accusingly towards her. "You know, I take back what I've said to you about being a demon. You're not. I thought you just got yourself really lucky. You got all the rewards you wanted. But apparently, it sucks to be you. And you've just proved that there's nothing really to be had, whether you have any of the rewards you want or not. There truly is nothing right in this world. Right now, I just want to destroy you. Or you, me. Whatever comes first. After this I will run as fast as I can towards Madoka and tell her everything, and she'll definitely awaken and make you her enemy."

After listening so much to what Sayaka had said, Homura had already lost the reason what she was doing on that bridge in the first place. The only thing that pulled her memory back was Sayaka's threat and the knowledge that it was time for her to disappear. "Sayaka Miki, if you do that, I will—"

"I know what you're thinking. One more body in the name of your wish wouldn't mean much. It won't mean much at all…"

For some reason, even with the power warming up in her palm, Homura could not get herself to carry it out. Some admonisher deep inside her forbade her to do so, and she desperately tried to contend with it, showing how the logical choice should be to destroy Sayaka Miki is, lest Homura suffered destruction herself.

Slowly, Sayaka's finger dropped, losing all hope for herself. Maybe for everything else as well. "…do it."

The admonisher was almost being subdued, but a weak, fleeting sliver of its influence came over her. "What?"

She took her hand off her face and looked at Homura. A fierce, hateful expression that screamed injustice came before her, its eyes streaked with a torrent off suffering that went down its cheeks.

"DO IT-!"

A moment is fleeting, but the word itself is vague. It never specifies how much time is spent, and it never deigns to signify how quick it is in a person's perception. For example, if one closed one's eyes, how long would a blink last? Defintely, a moment would never be properly defined as a unit in time, and its mere gist will only briefly explain how Sayaka Miki was there for one moment, and gone the next.

How Madoka came to be there though, right behind the Sayaka-shaped hole of air in this existence, nobody could explain. Not even Homura. Horrified that She had just witnessed her erasing Sayaka, Homura willed herself to run, or to teleport, or to alter space to get herself somewhere far away, but none of her functions worked. They refused to obey such a fearful master.

But Madoka, in spite of everything she had just witnessed, smiled softly at her and stepped forward. She saw her eyes gleam a golden shadow as she pressed forward and planted a light kiss on Homura's forehead.

Her body reacted with a single tear streaming down her cheek.

* * *

><p>It is raining. A light drizzle is going over what is left of Mitakihara city, purifying the ruins with the drops from the heavens above. The clouds seem to have split apart as if the final resurrection had began, with the sunlight peeking in rays in between, making the eroded, flooded ground sparkle.<p>

In the middle of it, between the ruined pillars lays a girl, her features displaying sleep, despite in reality only bearing lifelessness, death. Another girl walks towards this body, her steps creating ripples in the water of the hallowed grave. She kneels before the saint, and touched its frazzled pink hair, caressed its white cheeks, cried over its empty shell. As she weeps, with her long black braids soaked with rain, the tears would always fall into her glasses, until they would overflow and finally fall on her best friend.

"Why?" she asks, "Why did you fight even though you knew that you were going to die all along? It not worth saving me if you're not alive!"

The sky seems to partake in her sorrow, its solemn patter going through the same dolorous motion, taking pity on this girl its lord had forsook. She bent over and cried on the body, her tears hoping that somehow she will be saved, or that somehow her life would be taken in place of whom she had shed tears for.

She makes the last demand she wants from heaven. "I want you back!"

Sitting above her on a pillar was a white creature, a cat with ruby eyes that observed her carefully with the air of God himself.

"_Is that really what you want, Homura Akemi?" _it asked, giving her its message through thoughts. _"Would you trade your soul to make a wish like that come true?"_

Homura went on crying, the cruelty of fate closing her mind to anything but pain.

"_If there is something that you want badly and you are willing to accept the destiny of battling witches, then I can help you get what you want."_

At this moment, nothing else mattered to Homura except the body that was laid before her. Anything that would make it breathe and talk and love her again would be worth anything. Anything at all.

The rain falls, and she looks up at the creature. "If I make a contract with you, would you really grant me any wish?"

When faced with desperation and loneliness, humanity will always trade something for something else. Groveling, it will come to your feet, begging for salvation.

"_Absolutely. You have more than enough potential," _it said.

No matter how much suffering the trade will cost, no matter who humanity trades with, it can always and will always trade to make the pain of existence go away.

"_So tell me, what is the wish that will make your soul gem shine?_

But suddenly Homura stops crying. She raises her head and takes off her glasses, before observing the deceased Madoka before her. The creature looks at her in curiosity, anxious of a potential block to his plan. She puts her hands under her friend's body, and with a heave she lifts her off the ground.

"_What are you doing, Homura Akemi?"_

She does not answer.

"_Homura Akemi, where are you going?"_ The creature asked, its voice desperate. _"Will you still make the wish?"_

The tears of heaven fall unto her and she walks away from that place, her friend, long deceased, disappeared Madoka in her arms.

* * *

><p><strong>000<strong>

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><p><em><strong>Author's notes: <strong>_Well, for those who have made it this far… holy shit, you read through that whole rigamarole? Amazing, I'm goddamn impressed. When I was editing this thing, I couldn't even last one whole readthrough without having to down a shot of concentrated Nescafe. Whoever you are, I've got to hand it to you, man.

So for any reviews, applause, cheers, violent reactions, death threats, subpoenas, declarations of class-action lawsuits, and plain 'you suck' messages, please post them on reviews. If you would like to ask me something about the fic, writing in general, or well anything really, just PM me. Please give me at least 4 days up to a week to reply since I juggle this with an office job and we only have limited internet access wherever I work at. As for future fics, I have one more in storage but I'm still thinking of whether I should release it or not. It's another PMMM fic and I'll have to read it over a few times and see if it's good material. I think I'll be staying on this fandom for a while, but who knows, right?

Whoever wants to read what I have to say about the fic, then read on please.

For those who were confused by the abrupt style changes (if there are any; I dunno, that's the only thing I can think of that's potentially wrong with the fic besides from it being too goddamn long. I'm gonna be pretentiously artsy here so suck it), I did it all on purpose so I could see the reaction to the different styles employed. The whole long dialogue between was based on Dostoevsky's Walls of Texts where the dialogue took control of how the story went. That, and a chapter in _The Brothers Karamazov_ actually inspired that part of the story. It's the kind of writing style that eases you into a condition akin to listening to a voice in the radio, a character speaking away his lines and letting those words describe where the conversation is going. What I was going for was kind of like that, but instead of just voices it's a scene between Sayaka and Homura automatically playing it out inside your head as you read along the dialogue. Did I achieve that? I think so, but the fact you would have to readjust yourself from the first and middle parts would probably make the transition a whole lot bumpy.

In fact, the whole story was built around their conversation, with the first and middle parts about Sayaka being preparatory phases where I employed a Murakami/Palahniuk-inspired style that made use of conversational narration and quick dialogue between characters, and a preference of using similes to back up simple descriptions of objects. It's a good writing style to use if you're lazy and want something on paper quick and fast, hence why I feel the dialogue in some parts—especially at the beginning—was kind of rushed. I'm still trying to find out a way on how to make the dialogue in this kind of style clear and vivid but at the same time quick and easy to digest.

What I would have wanted it to do is that the first and second parts of the story would ease the reader down into preparing for this big crescendo at the end with the Wall of Text dialogue, then create a sort of soft landing with the end returning to a transition to the quick conversational tone employed in the first and second parts, along with a quick and pithy picture of its resolution. I'm afraid that it might be the opposite though: A car ride where the reader is smashed head-on into a new situation that leaves him dazed, confused and bored. It's a risk, but I'd rather take the risk and know its consequences than to not put it on the net and keep myself in the dark. Right?

Well, that's enough useless blathering for one day. Thanks for reading and again please leave comments. See you, guys.


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